Dinosaur species lived about 214 million years ago.
REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA — 25 years ago, scientists discovered dinosaur bones in Greenland. Now, scientists have confirmed that it is a new type of species.
Paleontologists say that the new dinosaur is named Daddy Saaneg. It is the oldest known plant-eating animal species in the world Greenland and surrounding.
Issi Saaneg is closely related to Plateosaurus commonly found in Germany. This animal lived about 214 million years ago in the Late Triassic, a time when the Earth was undergoing major changes.
“It is very interesting to find a close relative of Plateosaurus, of which more than 100 individuals have been found in Germany to date,” said Oliver Wings, co-author of the study at Diversity, along with Martin Luther, a paleontologist at the University of Halle-Wittenberg. Cosmo Magazine, Tuesday (9/11).
Issi Saaneq’s discovery consists of two nearly complete skulls originally discovered in the 1990s. This skull was initially incorrectly identified as belonging to Plateosaurus. Both skulls are unique in many aspects of their anatomy, such as the proportions and shape of their bones.
Victor Beccari, a graduate student in paleontology at the NOVA School of Science and Technology in Lisbon, Portugal, said the specimens were certainly related to a new species, Issi Saaneq. Beccari and team scanned the skull using micro-CT and grouped them together to visualize the internal structure of the bones. The resulting 3D models are publicly available online via MorphoSource.
The team found the skulls were from potential teens and sub-adults. It differs from the other sauropodomorphs described so far.
Interestingly, it bears distinct similarities to known Brazilian dinosaurs such as Macrocollum and Unaysaurus, both of which lived nearly 15 million years earlier. Beccari hopes the geographical and temporal distribution of these distinct but related dinosaurs may one day help paleontologists track their evolution.
Researchers say Issi Saaneq’s presence in Greenland could be explained by major climatic and geological changes occurring at the time, from the splitting of Pangea to warming temperatures.
At that time, Earth was undergoing climate change that allowed the first plant-eating dinosaurs to reach Europe and beyond.
Octávio Mateus, who supervised Beccari on his research, said this is the third new fossil vertebrate species the team has named for Greenland.
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